Well everyone else seems to have a draft model, so it was about time I put one together.

The image below tries to explain at a high level how the model works, what results it gives and what would still need to be completed to create a final draft board. Hopefully it saves me about 500-1000 words in trying to explain it.

No draft ranking can be based purely on numbers and I have never believed in trying to come up with "1 number" to rank players, so what we end up with here is putting players into draft groups. Those being early lottery, late lottery, 1st round, 2nd round and workout candidates.

To get to a final ranking, we would need to watch hours and hours of video, see the players in person, work them out, interview them etc. That is what theoretically a team would do after taking these inputs.

So please don't take this list as me saying this is the draft order.

In the table below, the draft groups are sorted by defensive ability. So again don't take it as a final order.

A couple of other notes and personal thoughts.....

Michael Porter Jnr didn't play enough games, so he is not in the below list.

The much talked about "bigs" (Ayton, Bagely, Bamba, Carter Jnr, Jackson) that most draft boards have as lottery picks. You will notice my model has Ayton, Carter Jnr and Jackson in the lottery and Bagley, Bamba outside.

This is based purely on an ability to shoot from 3 and space the floor. I am by no means confident that Ayton, Carter Jnr and Jackson can be effective from 3, but my model takes into account free throw percentage as a measure to determine an ability to shoot 3's in the future. Basically they have a good shooting technique.

If a team thought any of these guys couldn't shoot from 3 and space the floor then I would be taking them out of the lottery as I have done with Bamba and Bagley.

If i was making a call on who to draft first based purely off the model, then I would be choosing between Luka Doncic or Mikal Bridges as versatile wings. They are safer bets than the bigs who may or may not be able to space the floor.

A player the model really likes who I haven't seen rated anywhere is Gary Clark from Cincinnati. Many of his numbers that my model says are important are very high, especially defensively. Again this probably highlights the need for traditional scouting to properly rank players.

Finally, I can honestly say I have applied no personal bias to any players. I have ensured I didn't look at any other draft boards or draft analysis prior to putting this together. I wanted it to be based purely on how I put the model together.

Continuing on with the machine learning theme of the last few posts, where previously I had looked at how a high level scouting report can be created for teams. I now wanted to get into some nitty-grity detail and see what insights machine learning can discover in terms of specific 5 man line-ups.

We have hit a milestone in the NBA schedule as we move through Christmas. So what better time to check in and analyze which players are hurting their teams, with poor on court decisions and simple skill errors which I tally up in my Coach Killer metric.

The humble on-ball screen has been around since the beginning of basketball. For decades the formula has been simple, send one of your team's big guys to set an on-ball screen for your guard and that in itself will create a heap of options offensively. Whether it be allowing the guard to drive to the basket, the big guy to roll to the basket or the big popping to the perimeter to shoot a 3 to name a few.

One of the biggest perceived momentum changing plays in basketball, where a team misses a 3 point shot and the opposing team drills a 3 pointer on the very next play, therefore causing a 6 point swing...

The latest reports have Stephen Curry coming back from injury sometime in the 2nd round series vs the Portland Trailblazers. The Blazers will be looking to steal early wins in the series whilst Curry sits, but how are they going to do it? And what adjustments are the Warriors making without Curry?